1 Israel set out with all that he had and came to Beer-sheba, and he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. 2 That night God spoke to Israel in a vision: “Jacob, Jacob!” he said. And Jacob replied, “Here I am.” 3 God said, “I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there.
Genesis 46:1–3 (CSB)
Through the Bible: Genesis 46-47
Genesis 46 marks the tenth time God has repeated his promise to make the family of Abraham into a great nation. The promise was first spoken to Abraham when he had no land and no children, then repeated and expanded across decades of wandering, waiting, and fear. It was reaffirmed to Isaac in the midst of famine, and to Jacob while he was on the run, then again after he returned home a changed man. Each time, the promise stayed the same even as the circumstances changed—God would make a people from this family, a nation from this line.
But here in verse 3, God clarifies where Israel will become a great nation. And it won’t be in Israel.
It will be in Egypt.
That detail matters. Up to this point, the promise has always felt tethered to the land God swore to give Abraham. Canaan has hovered in the background as the assumed destination, the place where everything would finally make sense. But now God tells Jacob plainly that the work He has been promising all along will take place somewhere else. Not in the land of promise, but in Egypt. Not at home, but in exile.
Egypt was not a failure of faith. Jacob does not drift there accidentally, nor does he arrive without God’s blessing. In fact, God meets him on the way and reassures him that this descent is part of the plan. “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt,” God says, “for there I will make you into a great nation.” God is not abandoning His promise; He is advancing it—just not in the place Jacob might have expected.
And Egypt, at least at first, is good to them. There is food when the rest of the world is starving. There is land set aside for them in Goshen. There is protection, stability, and opportunity. Genesis 47 tells us that they gain possessions there, and that they are fruitful and multiply greatly. In every visible way, the promise seems to be working.
But blessing does not erase displacement. Opportunity does not equal belonging. Even as the family grows and prospers, Jacob senses the danger of forgetting who they are and where they are headed. That is why, at the end of his life, he insists that his bones not remain in Egypt. He knows how easily a temporary provision can begin to feel permanent, how quickly gratitude can harden into attachment.
God is making a great nation—but He is doing it before they ever arrive home. Identity comes before geography. God shapes His people in places that are productive but provisional, generous but not final. Long before Israel ever becomes a nation in its own land, it becomes a people who must learn to live with the tension of being blessed where they do not belong.
And that tension is not a problem to solve. It is part of the formation.
That tension—being blessed in a place that is not home—does not end with Genesis. It becomes a defining mark of God’s people. Jump ahead to 1 Peter. When Peter writes to believers scattered across the Roman world, notice what he calls them:
1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, 2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
1 Peter 1:1–2 (ESV)
Eelect exiles. Chosen by God, yet not settled. Belonging fully to Him, yet never completely at home in the world they inhabit. The language is deliberate. Election speaks to identity; exile speaks to location. God’s people have always lived in that space between promise and arrival.
And at the center of that identity stands Christ Himself. Jesus is the true Son who left His home, entered a foreign land, and took on life as a stranger and sojourner. “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” He said—not because the world was unfamiliar to Him, but because it was no longer ordered around Him. In Christ, God’s promise advances again in an unexpected place. Salvation comes not through conquest or settlement, but through exile, suffering, and return.
So when God tells Jacob that Israel will become a great nation in Egypt, He is already sketching the shape of the gospel. God forms His people before He settles them. He names them before He places them. And He teaches them—generation after generation—to live faithfully in the meantime. We are chosen, but not finished. Gathered, but not yet home. Like Israel in Egypt, and like the church Peter addresses, we live as God’s people in borrowed places, trusting that the God who goes with us will also bring us home.
related content
- Day 028: From Jacob to Israel and Back to Jacob (Genesis 46:2)
- Day 028: Carry Me Out of Egypt (Genesis 47:27-30)
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